City-to-City Co-operation (C2C) and the Realisation of Urban Sustainability

Publication Date :: 2007

The aims of this project are to examine the extent to which city-to-city co-operation is a feature of local government practice in the UK, the forms it is taking and its impacts on policymaking.

The project will assess the links and exchanges which are being created through city-to-city cooperation by UK local authorities and its effectiveness as a means of policy transfer and policy learning.

Critically, the project will examine the implications of city-to-city co-operation for the ways in which urban sustainability is being implemented. The project will examine the relevance and applicability of existing concepts of policy transfer, policy learning and governance for understanding CTCC, and the consequent implications for re-conceptualising these processes in the light of the findings of this project.

To achieve the projects aims and objectives, the research will be undertaken through analysis of four case studies - adaptation to climate change; and community development through the Community Strategy – two case studies per respective area.

The research is jointly funded with by the Economic and Social Research Council and the Building and Social Housing Foundation through a CASE studentship. The PhD supervisors are Dr Harriett Bulkeley and Dr Gordon McLoed of the Geography Department, University of Durham and Mrs Diane Diacon at BSHF.